Editorial: 15 years after September 11 attacks
Fifteen years, the blink of an eye.
As Daily Herald Staff Writer Melissa Silverberg describes today in her Page 1 report, September 11 is arms-length history to the generation now in school.
If you're in school, you were born after the awful September 11 attacks or you were so young that you have no recollection of them.
If you're in school, your entire life has been lived in the shadow of war and terrorism, but you have no sense of the day that precipitated it.
Fifteen years, for the rest of us, the tears still come to our eyes.
Our children and grandchildren ask: What was it like?
Our answer:
We will never forget. We will never be the same.
Let us try to explain to them with this reflection we published with the permission of its author, Brian W. Vaszily of Schaumburg on the first anniversary in 2002:
Where did you go that day?
Like so many Americans and people worldwide, did your heart go to your children, spouse, parents, family, friends?
Did you long to know they were OK, and would be OK?
Did your thoughts go to something you always meant to do?
Someone you always meant to talk to, or longed to hold?
That is love, and that is hope.
Far and wide, that is still the rule.
That — the 3,000 dead testify and the living must never forget — is what really matters.
We will never forget. We will never be the same.
Of the 2,997 names on that day's death toll, 10 were names known in our suburbs, real people who were real neighbors.
Wheaton native Todd Beamer, St. Charles native Andrew King, Jeffrey P. Miadenik of Hinsdale, Wheaton College graduate Jason Oswald, Robert Rasmussen of Hinsdale, Wheaton native Sue Sauer, Wheaton native Mark Schurmeier, Naperville native Dan Shanower, Inverness native Mari-Rae Sopper and Arlington Heights native Mary Lenz Wieman.
Go to New York City, and you'll see their names inscribed on the 9/11 Memorial. You'll see their photographs displayed in the 9/11 Memorial Museum.
Like the rest, they were normal people who had committed no crime, no offense against the world. They weren't killed because of something in particular that they espoused or did. They died only because they had gotten up that Tuesday morning to start their days.
Fifteen years later, we owe them our remembrance. And even more, we owe them our resolve.